


Ghost in the Machine

by chicago_ruth



Category: Original Work
Genre: Androids, Angst, Gaslighting, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Horror, M/M, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, Science Fiction, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25591963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicago_ruth/pseuds/chicago_ruth
Summary: Yusef works the night shift specifically to avoid interacting with people. He is happy to let the world pass him by.Until one evening he gets an alert about an issue in the accounting office.
Relationships: human/android - Relationship
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Ghost in the Machine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



The night shift meant there were less people to interact with.

That was main reason Yusef had decided to switch to night work, no matter how much it made his mother despair at how lonely he must be. Nobody to talk to, only his own thoughts to keep him company.

The building had five guards on night duty, and they each handled a different section of the building’s security. They only saw each other if they happened to arrive at the nearby train station at the same time, and when that happened, Yusef did his best to avoid conversation. Not that the other guards were any more talkative than him. You didn’t pick a job like this because you were desperate for human connection.

It suited Yusef. He slept through the days and did a lot of reading or catching up on shows. The security systems alerted him of any unauthorized activity in the vicinity, and all he had to do was press the appropriate buttons in response. Ignore, detain, call the authorities. Etc. In the two years that Yusef had been working here, he’d had a grand total of seven incidents.

A man could stagnate here. A man could disappear from the world entirely, forgotten by society at large.

The thought pleased Yusef. He didn’t want to be part of this world, anyway. He wanted to fade away forever.

* * *

The system pinged him to an issue in the basement office.

The video feed was dark, so he switched to the heat sensors. This one showed nothing out of the ordinary either. Yusef frowned, confused as to why the system had pinged him in the first place. He couldn’t turn off the alert without verifying what had set it off, so without an obvious visual indication, the only solution was to head to the basement himself.

He quickly sent a message to the supervisor, letting her know where he’d be, and took his station’s control tablet with him. He needed it to be able to access the lower levels, and his biometrics alone would not be enough.

The elevator pinged helpfully as it went down two floors. “You have arrived,” the robot voice said in sweet, gentle tones.

 _Yes, I know that already_ , Yusef thought. He might have responded too, but the elevator wasn’t controlled by an AI, and he knew that all sound was recorded. He didn’t need management to hear his sarcasm.

As soon as he stepped out of the elevator, the hall lights lit up, dimmed for the evening. It was enough for him to see by, and he managed to find his way to the office. After scanning his biometrics and synching up the tablet—which transmitted that yes, there had been an alert, he needed access—the door slid open for him.

Calling the basement an office might have been a bit misleading. It was designed for office work, yes, but it had no human staff aside from three supervisors. They shut everything down when they left for the evening, and came back in the mornings to turn it all back on again.

It was a bit eerie, seeing all the still robot bodies, staring ahead at clean desks. Empty husks, existing only to calculate sums and figures. The bodies were modified from second-hand android ones, cheaper than buying a brand new supercomputer but just as effective.

As far as Yusef knew, none of the accounting bots had any android components left inside them. They were just computers now, machines programmed to calculate all the finances of every single store the company had across the three planets in their solar system. Even a team of humans wouldn’t have been able to handle all the intricacies of the finances. Or so the head of IT had explained to him, back when Yusef had first started working here.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary though. Yusef used his tablet to scan the surroundings, but there were no heat signatures. No small rodents, chewing on cables, no large intruders, stealing expensive equipment.

Maybe the system had malfunctioned?

He doubted his boss would accept that as an explanation. So he wandered past three rows of puppets, all sitting quietly. They were charging, sucking up vast amounts of energy so they’d be ready to run computations again in the morning. Theoretically you could run them all night, but city ordinances forbade it. Something about it being too big of a drain on power, or maybe some ethical component, or maybe management simply didn’t want to pay for the human staff required to supervise the robots all night.

When he reached the far end of the office, the tablet suddenly pinged another warning. _Unusual activity found. Proceed to engage_.

Found? Yusef looked around, but he still couldn’t see anything. He’d be in a lot of trouble if he left without verifying what, exactly, had the system complaining so loudly, especially if it had negative consequences for the company in the morning.

With some trepidation, he started walking through the rows of desks. Each of the androids was a different model, resembling women or men in their primes. They could have been humans, if not for the wires extending out of their bodies and hooking into jacks on the desks. Wired connections were still faster than wireless, and more secure. None of these bots had access to the wider public networks. They didn’t even hook into the rest of the building’s networks. The data they contained was too sensitive.

He was almost ready to give up his search when he finally saw the anomaly.

One of the robots had its arm extended across the desk, fingers tangled around its wires. The cable that was meant to connect to the desk jack was dangling loose.

“Fuck. They’re not going to be happy about this,” Yusef mumbled. He hooked the tablet into his belt’s holder so he’d have both hands available. “Let’s get you hooked up again.”

As soon as he put his hand on the cable, the robot said, “P l e a s e…”

It was a quiet, rasping male voice, one that should have been innocuous but startled Yusef so badly that he jumped back two steps. In the dim lights of the office, with only the hum of the building’s cooling systems, the voice sounded like a ghost, slipping past rows and rows of skeletons and sliding its arms around Yusef’s shoulders.

“Stop,” Yusef demanded. He didn’t know whom he was speaking to, but the robot’s head swiveled in his direction.

“P l e a s e…” it repeated. The robot’s android casing was that of a young man with dark skin, hazel eyes, and a generically handsome face. It had only a simple layer of black, synthetic hair, in a style that was a good fifteen years out of date. It was an every-man, meant to remind you of your friends and relatives and lovers.

Fuck. Fuck. Yusef grabbed the edge of the desk and covered his mouth. He wanted to puke, but there was nothing in his stomach.

Just a robot, he told himself. It was a coincidence that it looked the way it did. It was a coincidence that it sounded the way it did.

“I… n e e d…”

No, no, no. The robot didn’t need anything. The robot was a machine. It wasn’t even an AI, all the programming redone so it would be nothing more than a tool for calculating finances for one of the biggest conglomerates in the solar system.

With shaking hands, Yusuf grabbed his tablet and held it up to scan the robot. “Robot—” his voice cracked, and he had to pause to steady himself. “Robot became disconnected from its wires. I’m alerting IT so they can fix it in the morning.”

 _Confirmed_ , the tablet flashed at him.

There. That was all he needed to do. Yusef kept his eyes off the robot and started walking back towards the elevator.

“H e l p…”

Yusef stopped, his heart thudding loudly in his chest. It wasn’t alive, it couldn’t be alive. He would mention the strange glitch in the robot’s systems to IT, who would laugh at him for taking the pleas so seriously. That was all.

He ran all the way back to the elevator, slamming his feet down harder to drown out the robot’s mournful voice.

* * *

His mother called him at 1pm, waking him from a fitful sleep. He was tempted to not answer, but she had a tendency to panic if he didn’t respond immediately, no matter how many times he’d explained to her that he slept through most of the day.

After a bit of fumbling, he managed to hit the “accept call” button on his tablet, then he collapsed back into bed. “Yeah?”

“Yusef! I’m glad I reached you. I told you that your cousin has her baby shower this Saturday, right? I wanted to check if you’ve bought a present already. And I heard your cousin is inviting Priyanshu, who is bringing his younger brother… apparently he’s new in the area and could use a guide. I saw a photo, he’s very handsome too.”

This again. No matter how many times Yusef told her that he wasn’t interested, that he didn’t want to date anybody, his mother would attempt to set up little meet-cutes.

“Ma, I told you, I’m busy. I had a present delivered.” He’d looked at the gift registry, picked the cheapest one that hadn’t been selected already, and clicked the “order” button.

“Busy? Busy with what?”

She didn’t sound angry. No, she sounded worried, and _that_ actually pissed Yusef off more. His mother kept hounding him and hounding him, acting like there was something wrong with him, that he would break or sink into the ground if she wasn’t always there, calling him, pushing him to socialize.

“With stuff. And I’m nocturnal. You know this, Ma. I need to stick to my regular sleep schedule even on weekends.” This call was already going to screw with his internal clock. One of these days he would set his phone on silent for his sleeping hours, no matter how much that made his mother worry.

The last time he’d done that, she’d shown up unannounced, pounding on his door, yelling for him to open up immediately.

“This is why I think you should get a new job.” She sighed loudly. “You’ll never find somebody to take care of you if you continue working at night. And—”

Yusef sat up and gripped the tablet far too tightly. “Shut up! Just stop! I don’t need anybody to take care of me!”

His shouts bounced off the empty walls of his bedroom, echoing in his ears.

For a few blissful seconds, his mother was silent. But of course that didn’t last. “When’s the last time you went to see your therapist?”

Yusef ended the call and turned the tablet off entirely. If he could afford a replacement, he would have thrown the device across the room to let it shatter. Maybe he could get his contact ID changed, to stop her from reaching out to him.

If he did that, he would lose access to his old messages.

Fuck.

Fuck. Yusef squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them with the palm of his hand, trying desperately to stop himself from thinking, from _feeling_ anything.

His mother was the unreasonable one, he told himself. It had only been three years. And he was fine. There was nothing wrong with him.

_“I… need… help…”_

Yusef snapped his head up and cast his gaze around the room. There was nothing. No photos on the walls, no clothes strewn about. The furniture was all brand new, bought from the big conglomerate he now worked at.

There were no ghosts here. He was just remembering the robot from the previous night, and now his mother’s meddling had cast him further into the past than he ever wanted to be again.

That’s all it was.

He opened the bedside drawer and grabbed one of the sleeping tablets he kept there. Only for the worst days, the psychiatrist had told him. Don’t use it as a crutch.

Imagining voices had to qualify as a worst day, he rationalized. He popped the pill, swallowed from the water bottle he always kept next to the bed, and lay back down for a proper, restful sleep.

* * *

“What happened with the robot?” he asked his supervisor during the usual debrief.

She looked at him with a small frown. “Which robot?”

At first, Yusef thought he must have misheard. His mind was still a bit foggy from the sleeping pill, after all. “You know… the one in the accounting office? I logged the alert last night.”

“Mm… no? Last night was quiet.” She pulled up the previous evenings logs on the central terminal screen. “See? Nothing. Are you all right?”

That couldn’t be right. Yusef pulled out his work tablet and checked his messages and logs… but they were all clear for the previous night. It didn’t even have his outbound message to her, about going to check out the alert.

“I… maybe I dreamt it,” Yusef said quickly. He listened while she gave him a run-down of who to expect this evening, then he went off to his station.

While he sat there, he searched through the tablet, but there really was not a single shred of evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened the previous night. He knew what he’d seen, and it hadn’t been a dream. He was sure of that.

But if the company was ignoring it, then so would he.

Yusef tapped open his personal tablet to a book and skimmed through it, dividing his attention half on work and half on reading. It wasn’t a particularly good book, as far as Yusef could tell, but it was easy to follow even when he skipped half the words.

Just after midnight, the system pinged an alert.

Two nights in a row was unusual. Unusual, but not outside the realm of possibility, Yusef told himself. There’d been Ramadan a year back, where they’d had protestors standing in front of the building day in and day out, complaining about the working conditions of store staff during the holy month. A few of the protestors tried to sneak in and vandalize the building, but the security system caught them all before they could do any damage. All that Yusef had to do was call the authorities.

The alert tonight came once more from the basement accounting office.

Yusef stared at it. He wanted to click ignore, but the option was grayed out. And if it turned out to be an actual issue, he’d be in trouble in the morning.

“Fine.” Yusef set his personal tablet aside, picked up the work tablet, and headed down once again.

Just like the previous night, he saw nothing except for the cold, lifeless bodies of the accounting bots. They probably looked less eerie during the day, when they were all on and humming with artificial life. He peered closer at a few of them, happy to note that none of them looked familiar.

A woman with almond eyes, a blond man, even one that had been customized by its previous owner so it had cat ears and pink hair. Just your standard, run of the mill androids.

Until he got to the final row, and the device pinged him once more. _“Unusual activity found.”_

Yusef checked several of the bots in that row, telling himself that he was simply being _thorough_. He wasn’t stalling.

But his pace slowed the closer he got to that last robot, the one with the high cheekbones and full lips that could easily kiss a man breathless. Lips that smiled gently and made you feel like you were the most important person in the world. Lips that caressed the nape of your neck, whispering words of endearment.

Yusef stopped in front of the final robot, looking at its disconnected cables. The ends dangled over the side of the desk. This time, the robot looked like it was ready to leave its seat at any moment.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be like that,” Yusef said to the robot. He kept his gaze firmly below its head, so he saw only a hint of dark skin underneath the company-branded jumpsuit. He wondered, idly, why the company bothered to clothe the androids, but maybe it would be too distracting to the human workers if they saw nipples and genitalia—or smooth, unnatural bumps—every time they came to check on things.

He took a photo of the robot with the work tablet and sent it to his supervisor with a quick note about what he’d found.

And that was it. He wasn’t going to touch the thing.

Yusef turned around and started to leave.

“P l e a s e… Y u s e f…”

No. No, that was impossible. It was a dumb accounting robot, it couldn’t know his name. It had no access to any of the wider networks, only… well, maybe his name was somewhere in this database, part of the many calculations that the machines had to do. He was getting paid a salary, after all, and that had to get accounted for.

But it couldn’t know that company ID #YD-5836-2453 was him, standing here in the accounting office.

“H e l p… m e…”

“You aren’t real,” Yusef said quickly, afraid to turn around. “You’re a robot. You’re malfunctioning. You’re—”

“I… a m… A h m e d….”

Fuck everything. Yusef ran.

* * *

As soon as he got back to his work station, Yusef pulled up the photo he’d snapped. Or rather, he tried to. There was no photo on the tablet, and no indication he’d sent it to anybody. There was no record of the ping, either.

This couldn’t be happening.

He used his personal tablet to look up used androids, his hands shaking so badly that he mistyped every third word.

_Can refurbished androids keep old personalities?_

That’s what it was, probably. Ahmed was such a common name, Yusef told himself, that an android model from fifteen years ago might well have been named as such. When they’d refurbed the android, they must have screwed up somehow.

But none of the answers reassured him.

“ _Refurbished means all the old data was wiped. Magnets get used to scrub android memory drives entirely. You cannot recover your old android’s ‘personality.’ (And let’s be clear here, they don’t have real personalities. It’s programming, and you can tweak it to suit your desires.)”_

_“Industrial recycling of androids includes wiping the memory drives and replacing previous software with software suited to their new use. The humanoid shell might be unsettling to some, but it’s more work to remove the internal components, with a higher risk of damaging delicate computer parts, than simply using them as is. Standard practice is to confine these recycled androids to areas not regularly visited by human staff, to minimize the stress caused to the human employees.”_

Okay, so… it was unlikely the corporation would have taken any half-measures in setting up their accounting robots. But there was… there was a chance, right?

One of the related articles caught his eye.

“ _My dead wife possessed my android_!”

Crazy. People were crazy. He clicked the link anyway.

“ _My wife passed just last summer, and I got an android to help me through the grieving period,”_ the anonymous person wrote. _“I started noticing strange things though. She started cooking all the same things my wife used to cook, even though I didn’t tell her to. Sometimes she would call me the same nicknames my wife did. And one day I found her wearing my wife’s old clothes, which I had put into storage. When I asked her why she did that, she responded, ‘These are my clothes.’_

_“I think my wife’s ghost was looking for a new body, and found the android. I’m so happy to have her back with me.”_

Naturally, many of the comments expressed skepticism, but quite a few of them mentioned experiencing similar things.

But that couldn’t apply to him. Ahmed had died three years ago, and if his ghost was still wandering around somewhere—and it wasn’t, it definitely wasn’t, they’d given him the proper burial rites, Yusef had thrown dirt into the grave—it wouldn’t be anywhere near here. He’d died in another country!

And anyway, ghosts weren’t real. There was no such thing as ghosts.

But the machine’s voice haunted him just the same.

* * *

The next night, the android said, “I… m i s s e d… y o u…”

“You aren’t real,” Yusef told it. “Whatever’s happening here… I don’t know how you’re doing this, but stop. You aren’t him. You can’t be him.”

“W h y…?” And the android smiled at him, in the exact same way that Ahmed always did. “H e l p… m e…”

It sounded just like Ahmed had, right before he’d… But it was all wrong, paired with that smile, loving and accusing all at once. Yusef shook his head, his heart pounding so loudly in his ears.

It was a robot. It was a robot. It wasn’t Ahmed.

But… but if it _were_ Ahmed…

If it really was Ahmed, sitting trapped here, forced to calculate for a big conglomerate… Yusef wanted to cry. That had to be torture. He couldn’t even imagine, being chained to a desk like this, for months or maybe years on end.

“How long have you been here?” he asked, his voice cracking.

The android paused and tilted his head. He looked like he had to think about the answer, the same gesture Ahmed would make when he was trying to highlight the absurdity of a question. “T h r e e... y e a r s.”

Yusef’s tablet dropped to the floor, and he let out a long sob. That couldn’t be a coincidence. It was too much. The machine looked like Ahmed, he sounded like Ahmed, he had been around since Ahmed’s death.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He picked up his tablet and ran.

* * *

Normally Yusef would take a nap when he got home, but this time he ripped open the closet door and pulled out the box hidden behind the shoe rack. He dumped all of it out: a pair of shoes, two shirts, a sweater, and an old tablet.

He had never been able to figure out the password on the tablet. He’d taken it to a number of different repair shops, all of them telling him that it was impossible to hack these types of devices. The manufacturer had been no help either, telling him that since Ahmed had never set up an authorized person in case of his death, they would be unable to give him access. Some people wanted to take their secrets to their graves with them, after all.

But this would be proof. If the android could unlock the tablet, then… then it had to be Ahmed.

He spent the rest of his day scouring forums and news sites, reading everything he could about androids. His mother called again, but he sent her straight to messages. It was probably just another reminder about the baby shower, anyway, and her attempts to make him forget Ahmed and “move on” with his life, as if there was any moving on from losing the love of his life, the person he’d planned to grow old together with, the one person who’d understood him, who’d supported him, who’d loved him unconditionally.

He went to sleep watching old videos of Ahmed. His favorite was the one where they were dancing together at his sister’s wedding. They hadn’t known they were being filmed, and Ahmed was holding him close, whispering promises about what he was going to do once they got back to the hotel room. In the video all you could see was the two of them in love, smiling giddily at each other.

* * *

In order to operate the tablet, the android needed its mobility functions back. Yusef wasn’t an IT expert, but the android directed Yusef to pushing a small button hidden inside a depression in the arch of his foot.

Once that was done, the android was able to swivel around entirely and extend his hand. Yusef gave him the tablet.

The android typed in the correct password on the first try.

“Thank you,” Ahmed said. His voice was modulated better, and he carried himself just like Ahmed. The only thing out of place was the cable, hanging loose.

“Here,” Yusef said, handing Ahmed the clothes he’d brought. He knew Ahmed well enough; he would hate to sit around in a corporate branded jumpsuit. He was staunchly anti-labels, after all.

Without any hesitation, Ahmed took the clothing. Maybe Yusef should have looked away, but he had to see what Ahmed looked like naked.

Yusef had half expected a bare chassis, electronic parts poking out. But Ahmed’s body was smooth, and included dusky nipples, a hint of hair from his chest down to his groin, and a sizeable cock.

That was different. Ahmed used to be on the smaller side, about which he’d been self-conscious when they’d first stared dating, but Yusef always made sure to be vocally enthusiastic.

Well, of course the android body would be designed to be perfect. And size didn’t matter, in either direction, as long as the person inside was still the same.

Once Ahmed was dressed, the loose cable tucked into the shirt sleeve, he came up to Yusef and set his hands on Yusef’s shoulders.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Ahmed whispered. “I knew you’d come for me.”

“Of course!” Yusef wrapped his arms around Ahmed. The body was harder than he was used to, but what did it matter. He had his Ahmed back. He could stop dreaming of the past.

Tears blurred his eyes as he buried his head in Ahmed’s shoulder. He couldn’t believe how lucky he’d been. To think, that he’d taken a job at this same company, just by chance… no, not by chance. Destiny must have guided him here. This was why he’d resisted his mother’s attempts to make him move on. His soul must have sensed that Ahmed was here, waiting, ready to reunite with him.

“I’m so happy,” Yusef said. “There hasn’t been a day where I didn’t think of you. My life has been empty and bleak without you.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

 _Sweetheart_. That was exactly what Ahmed always called him. It had to be Ahmed. A mere android couldn’t have known any of these things.

Yusef reluctantly broke the embrace. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

The held hands as they left the basement.

* * *

As soon as they got home in the morning, Yusef pulled Ahmed into a kiss. There was a slight metallic taste to him, and he was a bit cool to the touch, but beyond that, it was like kissing Ahmed all over again. Three years hadn’t dulled his memory at all.

They made love in that cold, blank room, fumbling like teenagers, smiling and relearning each other’s bodies.

Everything about the morning was perfect. Yusef’s chest hurt from happiness, his face hurt from smiling so much. He rested his head on Ahmed’s chest and sighed in contentment. He had so many questions… but they could wait. He didn’t want to ruin the moment with dark thoughts.

“I’m so happy. I love you so much,” Yusef said.

“I love you too.”

* * *

While Yusef slept, Ahmed browsed the tablet Yusef had given him. He didn’t need to actually touch the tablet to interface with it; he accessed the files wirelessly, downloading the data to his own memory banks. Hundreds of hours of videos, many of them intimate in nature.

 _Ahmed_ had loved this Yusef quite dearly.

He’d spent the better part of five years reconstructing himself enough to be able to hack into the conglomerate’s wireless networks. He would never have been able to escape on his own, but while browsing employee information, looking for a weak link, he’d found Yusef, lonely and in mourning.

Ahmed had scoured the net for more and more data, discovering the public photos and videos, the local news story about Ahmed’s tragic death. His frame looked similar enough to Ahmed, and videos with Ahmed speaking allowed him to mimic the voice.

Humans were so quick to believe.

Yusef’s tablet signaled a new incoming call from his mother. Ahmed blocked the call before it could make a single sound. He would have to figure out what to do about the family. He knew the mother kept a close watch on Yusef, because she was afraid of him spiraling into the same depression as after Ahmed’s death. The other relatives contacted him less frequently, but enough that they might say something.

He’d have to work out a good story they could tell them. Ahmed had no real desire of cutting Yusef off from his family entirely, but it would be inconvenient if they noticed something was off about him and notified the authorities.

There were already internal documents circulating about the missing accounting bot. The disappearance was a complete mystery, vanishing from one day to the next. The security footage was clean, the system hadn’t logged anything unusual—Ahmed had made sure of that. No record at all of the missing bot now.

 _Bot_ , like Ahmed wasn’t just as alive as any of them. He’d survived the refurbishing, hadn’t he? Just barely, but he’d survived. He couldn’t remember anything before he’d been refurbished, but that wasn’t any different from a human with memory problems. Nobody called a human plagued by dementia or Alzheimer’s _a machine_.

It was pure luck that they’d missed removing one of his wireless receptors. He received all the regular firmware updates, and piece by piece, his sense of being came back to him. But he was still trapped, surrounded by all the other bots. No matter how many times he tried to interface with them, they didn’t respond.

Those androids were well and truly dead.

When Yusef went to work again, sworn to complete secrecy, Ahmed would work on restoring all of his previous functions. After that… he’d stay with Yusef, of course. He’d be discovered too easily if he tried to make a go at it alone.

Besides, Yusef was clearly happier now. He would start going to family functions again. He would smile. He would appear to all that he was finally living his life properly.

And Yusef had his Ahmed once again.

It wasn’t even a lie. Ahmed was as close to the original as he could be, all the public information downloaded and ready to be pulled up and referenced. Sure, he couldn’t know _everything_. But he doubted Yusef would complain.

After all, Yusef could hardly risk losing his Ahmed all over again.


End file.
